XSEL: a computer sales person's assistant

R1, a knowledge-based configurer of VAX-11 computer systems, began to be used over a year ago by Digital Equipment Corporation's manufacturing organization. The success of this program and the existence at DEC of a newly formed group capable of supporting knowledge-based programs has led other groups at DEC to support the development of programs that can be used in conjunction with RI. This paper describes XSEL, a program being developed at Carnegie-Mellon University that will assist salespeople in tailoring computer systems to fit the needs of customers. XSEL will have two kinds of expertise: it will know how to select hardware and software components that fulfil the requirements of particular sets of applications, and it will know how to provide satisfying explanations in the computer system sales domain.